Category: marketing

Imagine games where participants can develop projects in real life to address real problems, such as securing a community’s food supply or establishing a sustainable power source, then progress through levels of the game; would not it be a great way of learning?

Jane McGonigal, author of Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World (Penguin Press, 2011) and the former director of Games Research and Development at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, Calif. presented at EDUCAUSE 2013 a series of examples of games which can change the future of education [ARTICLE]

Sabina Idler is community manager, technical writer & UXer @ Usabilla and published this article on designing for waiting times following 5 patterns. Patterns are inspired by David Maister who, in his article about The Psychology of Waiting Lines, explained why perceived waiting time usually has little when nothing to do with the actual time [ARTICLE]

In the last few years we have all been living in (strict) contact with our smartphones but there is a new player claiming to bring us a step ahead. The Moto X, the first born from the union between Motorola and Google, will take advantage of sensors and cloud-based services to provide us with a new experience: anticipate our desires and fulfill them when possible without even needing to take it off from our pockets [ARTICLE]. Interestingly, it seems that me and Kai Olsen predicted these gadgets almost 3 years ago: Kai A. Olsen, Alessio Malizia, “Automated Personal Assistants,” Computer, vol. 44, no. 11, pp. 112, 110-111, November, 2011

The big difference and value is in storydoing through action an not in communication only, e.g. storytelling. Examples of story doers are: Target, Walt Disney, Starbucks, American Express, Apple, Jet Blue, and IBM among others. In this study, published on the Harvard Business Review Blog, there is even evidence that storydoing companies are generating a substantially greater number of mentions in social media [ARTICLE]

About Me

Alessio Malizia is Professor of User Experience Design at University of Hertfordshire. UK. He is interested in Human-Computer Interaction, Ubiquitous Computing, and Social Networks – in short: Human-Centered Systems